I carefully read the article about how many people are getting tickets for burning pallets and unattended fires at the beach firepits in Ocean Beach (“Pallet fires are fun, but you could get burned by a fine,” Nov. 15 Beacon, Page 1).

The three alternatives we have to pallets are: 1) new lumber, which is costly and not very green-oriented just to burn without being used for something else first; 2) downed trees split, cured and dried not only a lot of work, but how many of us in the city have land and trees just to cut for firewood at home or a firepit? Come on, really?; and 3) old building demolition — depending how old the structure, will have at least one of the following on it: fiberglass insulation, lead-filled paint or — better yet — asbestos, which is found in every residential home built before 1970. In OB, that is 90 percent of structures here.

The point is that officials are trying to get rid of all the fire rings because it costs something to maintain them — al-though this is only a fraction of their last pay raise. What I see is a few people trying to cut out pennies from the budget when they should be aiming a lot higher. It costs more for the bulldozers to come out and put up the sand berm along most of the county’s beaches and then coming back after each high tide or storm to clean up the kelp and debris from our beaches. They delayed the Brighten Avenue bathroom two years because it suited their agenda at the time. In the meantime all of the tourists and locals were forced to use the Santa Monica facility that was way overused and poorly maintained over that three-year period, maybe longer.

In the end, they put a law into use that was badly researched or not researched at all because it fit their agenda.

The City is broke and they are looking for ways to save on everything. They spent too much on employees and their pensions. Fire pits are nothing. Be grateful that they pick up trash, police the streets and provide basic services to those in need.

Pallet-burning leaves writer doing slow burnI carefully read the article about how many people are getting tickets for burning pallets and unattended fires at the beach firepits in Ocean Beach (“Pallet fires are fun, but you could get burned...